Waste segregation requires participation from all stakeholders: Chennai Corporation Commissioner

by July 15, 2024 Waste Management
GCC Commissioner Dr J Radhakrishnan assures sanitary workers not to worry about their job security when waste collection is privatised

Chennai generates as much as 6,300 metric tonnes of garbage every day. Of this, 60% of the waste is biodegradable — which means that if we segregate the waste properly at source this 60% could be prevented from going to the landfills and eventually turning into legacy waste.

Like any other metro city, Chennai also faces many challenges in the management of solid waste. The first part of this series delved into the challenges that Chennai faces in segregating waste at source. In the second part, Dr J Radhakrishnan, Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner, talks to Citizen Matters about various issues related to solid waste management in Chennai.

GCC Commissioner Dr J Radhakrishnan
GCC Commissioner Dr J Radhakrishnan

Read more: Why a waste-to-energy plant is not the answer to Chennai’s garbage problems

Chennai and its challenges with solid waste management

“Solid waste management is a labour-intensive activity. As many as 19,000 odd people are removing the garbage of 89 lakh people every day in Chennai. This will work only when the waste is segregated at the source,” says Radhakrishnan.

Though biomining allows to process the mixed waste, it is ideal for the residents to segregate the waste at the source. “We need a multipronged approach to deal with the solid waste in a city like Chennai and it requires participation from all sides (not only residents but also the workers and all others),” he adds.

The recent resolution passed in the GCC Council allows tendering out the collection and transportation of solid waste in the two zones (Royapuram (zone 5) and Thiru. Vi. Ka. Nagar (zone 6) to private agencies. Opposing this, over 150 conservancy workers staged a protest.

Responding to this, Radhakrishnan says that the GCC will make a conscious effort to utilise the workers across various departments like health, schools, parks or in the zones where waste collection is not privatised. “The workers need not worry about their job security,” assures Radhakrishnan.

Watch the full video to learn more about how GCC plans to approach the idea of a waste-to-energy plant, how they monitor the private contractors involved in waste collection and more.

Video by Shobana Radhakrishnan

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About Shobana Radhakrishnan

Shobana Radhakrishnan is Associate Editor at Citizen Matters. She keenly follows the impact of development on marginalised communities through an intersectional lens. Before relocating to Chennai in 2022, she reported from Madurai for the national daily The New Indian Express. Over the course of her career, she has covered several key elections, including the Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections (2021), the Rural Local Body Polls (2021), the Urban Local Body Elections (2022), and the Parliamentary Elections (2024), as well as cultural events such as Jallikattu. Known for her extensive reportage on the urban housing crisis, her four-part series on how state-led evictions propel domestic violence in Chennai’s resettlement areas was shortlisted for the 2024 Kamla Mankekar Award for Journalism on Gender and her photo story, Life in Single-Room Homes in Chennai, received a special mention (runner-up) in the Ashish Yechury Memorial Awards for Photojournalism. Shobana holds a Master’s in Mass Communication and Journalism from Pondicherry Central University.
Read more by Shobana Radhakrishnan

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